Austrian Kidnap Victim Now Owns Home She Was Held In For Eight Years

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Natascha Kampusch was help captive by Wolfgang Priklopil for eight and a half years. She now owns the house she was help hostage at as part of the compensation.

The young Austrian was kidnapped at the age of 10 on 2 March 1998 as she made her way to school. Priklopil kept her locked away for the next eight and a half years in a dungeon under his home.

While Kampusch owns the property it is not thought that she is residing on it. She had been awarded two-thirds of the property with Priklopil’s mother owning the other third. Kampusch made a deal with the woman to gain control of the final third. The home was built by Priklopil’s father.

Now 20 Kampusch escaped her captive in 2006 while washing his car. A cell phone call pulled him away from her side and she ran through yards until her pleas of help were finally taken seriously by a neighbour who called the police. Priklopil killed himself by jumping in front of a train after Kampusch escaped.

But she also said: “I always had the thought: Surely I didn’t come into the world so I could be locked up and my life completely ruined. I give up in despair about this unfairness. I always felt like a poor chicken in a hen house. You saw my dungeon on television and in the media. Thus you know how small it was. It was a place to despair.” Dietmar Ecker, Kampusch’s media advisor, said Kampusch told him Priklopil “would beat her so badly she could hardly walk. When she was beaten black and blue, he tried to smarten her up. Then he would take his camera and photograph her”.

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